The Oregon Health Authority did not say on Tuesday whether it plans to maintain a lottery system for Portland area residents who will become eligible on March 29 for COVID-19 vaccinations at the Oregon Convention Center.
State officials launched the lottery system for appointments at the large-scale clinic after frustrated seniors struggled last month to book seats on free online services.
Extending the lottery system beyond the elderly may make sense – except that there is a problem: the existing registry is still not asking residents to enroll crucial questions about their occupations and underlying medical conditions, two things needed to determine eligibility in the next wave .
This indicates that Oregon may need to review the registration process and ask thousands of people to re-enroll or provide new information, or possibly switch to a different consultation system at the convention center, the state’s largest vaccination site.
“If there are changes to the current system to guarantee commitments on March 29, we will announce and share them widely,” said spokesman Rudy Owens in an email to The Oregonian / OregonLive on Tuesday.
In less than two weeks, Oregon residents aged 45 to 64 with underlying diseases will become eligible for vaccination. The same will happen with some frontline workers in jobs that include agriculture and food processing, as well as people who are homeless or homeless by last September’s forest fires.
Oregon’s current schedule for vaccinating multiple groups passes by Group 6 on March 29, as described in this chart. (Graph presented at covidvaccine.oregon.gov)
State officials estimate that it is possible that more than half a million Oregon residents are newly eligible.
But many Portland area residents in the next wave are apprehensive after crashing launches in February bogged down by slow sites and many failures. Residents are watching and waiting for details as the end of March approaches.
Will Portland area residents need to keep an eye on their watches, go online at precisely the right time and click wildly to try to make an appointment, as seniors currently do for vaccinations at Portland International Airport, one of Portland’s other major vaccination centers?
Or will the state use its registration and lottery system, as it does for older people who want to see Oregon Convention Centers, selecting their names at random and sending them links to schedule vaccination times?
Beaverton resident Eric Johansen is among those waiting for answers.
“Thirteen days to go – it’s getting close,” Johansen said on Tuesday.
Johansen said he will become eligible on March 29 because he is 62 and has diabetes. But, as the state’s website did not ask him if he had any underlying conditions when he previously registered, the first date he could determine that he is eligible is June 1. That’s when healthy adults between the ages of 45 and 64 can start scheduling appointments under the current Timeline regime.
Johansen said he recently logged on to the registration site GetVaccinated.Oregon.gov recently and was relieved to see that the state added a notice at the top of his account stating that he will have to return and answer a new set of questions soon. Owens, the spokesman for the Oregon Health Authority, told The Oregonian / OregonLive that changes could occur later this week.
Johansen’s responses to his basic condition will ultimately allow the website to accurately inform him when he is eligible – and to enter him in a draw for consultations at the convention center, if indeed that is the system the state chooses to use.
But Johansen is not willing to rely entirely on the lottery system. He has already visited drugstore websites because he wanted to see how many consultations are available, figuring they would be a good backup if the state’s system fails.
He recently found open hours at Costco stores in Albany and Roseburg, offering a little peace of mind, although he did not book because he has not yet qualified.
“It’s a good thing that I’m retired,” said Johansen, the ex-treasurer and debt manager for the city of Portland, with a laugh, “or I wouldn’t have time to do all this research.”
Tom McCarthy, a 58-year-old Gresham resident, said he will also be eligible on March 29 because he has lung disease and a body mass index just over 30. He also noticed the same problem with GetVaccinated.Oregon.gov that Johansen noticed, but notes that there may be many others who don’t.
“Obviously, I’m not going to wait two extra months,” McCarthy said in an email. “… But I worry that there will be many people who assume that the reason they have not yet received one (notification) is because their names have not yet been randomly drawn among the large number of people in the qualification pool.”
According to the Health Authority, more than 120,000 residents have registered with GetVaccinated.Oregon.gov, which also currently serves as a lottery at the convention center for the Portland area seniors.
In other parts of Oregon, the process for obtaining vaccination appointments varies from county to county – and the Health Authority recommends that residents check with their local counties to learn more about the application process that will be used.
In all, the state estimates that more than 525,000 could become eligible on March 29. The state is not sure of the exact number because it did not count for some groups, such as pregnant women and firefighters, and some people in this next wave may have already been vaccinated.
State officials say weekly federal remittances to the state have been increasing rapidly since the beginning of this winter and some previous problems should be more easily avoided.
In fact, Oregon officials said they expected President Biden to meet his goal of making all Americans eligible for vaccination on May 1 – a schedule that Oregon plans to honor only if the promised doses arrive.
McCarthy, the resident of Gresham, said he has been thinking a lot about the immediate future.
“I’m thinking about it because if I understand I’m probably one of the people most likely to die, ”he said of COVID-19.
March 29, he added, “is definitely on my agenda”.
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– Aimee Green; [email protected]; @o_aimee